Supreme

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT SUPREME - PAGE 3

It is a case of Supreme hypocrisy. The adjective refers to that nine-person tribunal at the top of the American legal system, the noun to its latest act of judicial malpractice. Meaning not the notorious Hobby Lobby decision handed down at the end of June, but a less-noticed ruling a few days later. We have to revisit the former to provide context for the latter. On June 30, the court ruled that a "closely held" corporation may deny employees health insurance covering any contraceptive method that conflicts with the company's religious beliefs.

While Boris Yeltsin was cutting deals with captains of industry and establishing cordial relations with Pope John Paul II, the head of his information agency brooded on conspiracies to dethrone Russia's new czar. Yeltsin, having demolished Mikhail Gorbachev's power base, talked condescendingly about his former rival, telling a news conference that Gorbachev would be the first Soviet chief of state since 1917 to "retire tranquilly." Ilia Baranikas, director of Yeltsin's Russian Information Agency, isn`t so sure.

Though I sensed an ironic undercurrent in Eric Gwinn's revelation of all that technology has in store for us ("The tech life," Dec. 4), I couldn't help thinking of lines from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden": "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. . . . We are eager to tunnel under the Altlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news . . . will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."

The World Series. It is supposed to be a baseball player's supreme moment, but that had all changed. This is Brett Butler's first World Series. At 32, with no power and aging legs, there can`t be many more, and chances are there won`t be any more. The San Francisco Giants` leadoff man had just finished a round of extra batting practice. After hitting .211 against the Cubs in the playoffs and after going 1 for 6 (plus two walks and two steals) in two games of the Series against the Oakland A's, he needed it. He also needed something to do. His mother, Betty, was back at work as a clerk in the Libertyville Village Hall in Illinois.

`The way to work this through was to drain the venom out of that rhetoric which we have done over the last month or so and to work with them very hard and privately. We are in the process of doing so and not pessimistic about it.'-Anthony Lake, the national security adviser, on chances for China to earn extension of its trade privileges with the United States. BOSNIAN MUSLIM AIDA SOFTIC, 20, A FOREIGN EXCHANGE STUDENT IN OHIO WHEN WAR BROKE OUT IN HER COUNTRY: `I used to say I'd love to go back.

Andrew B. Loiacono, 83, a retired pharmacist whose simple philosophy allowed his Wheaton store to prosper while other pharmacies closed under pressure from national chains, died Sunday, Nov. 5, in Wynscape Nursing Home in Wheaton. "He taught all of his employees to treat every person who came into the store as though they were family," said Mr. Loiacono's son Vincent. Mr. Loiacono opened Wheaton Pharmacy in 1949 after graduating from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

If finger-drumming ever becomes an Olympic event, the justices of Russia's highest court might prove world-class contenders, for they've had little else to do in recent months. Dormant since President Boris Yeltsin suspended it for blatant partisanship during last October's parliamentary rebellion, Russia's Constitutional Court is still awaiting parliamentary approval to resume its role as the nation's supreme judicial guardian. And the limbo is getting awkward. "Frankly, we are in an uncomfortable situation from a moral point of view," conceded Justice Ernest Ametistov, one of the 13 underemployed high court judges.

Destiny's Child -- the pop group's name suggests the favor of fate and birthright, and there has never been a doubt about which member is the designated child of destiny. In Destiny's Child, Beyonce Knowles is supreme in the way Diana Ross once was a Supreme. Knowles has chafed under the popular perception that her fellow group members are interchangeable, but given the presence of her father, Mathew Knowles, as the group's strong-willed manager and the jettisoning of three early members, that perception has been hard to dance away from.

No one can accuse Dito Montiel of sugarcoating his past. The memoirist turned screenwriter turned director has hit it out of the park with his first feature, crafting an unflinching, often brutal retrospective of his formative years in Astoria, Queens. It was the worst of times ... and that's pretty much the sum of it. Simmering violence, drug abuse, aggressive sexuality and supreme dysfunction were facts of life for Dito and his friends. Not that they saw it that way. Wandering through the streets, upending garbage cans, cat-calling girls, harassing immigrant bodega owners, the young Dito (Shia La Beouf, in what should be a career-defining performance)

Jim Courier won the French Open Sunday. C`est la vie. Courier's 7-5, 6-2, 6-1 rout of Petr Korda to win his second consecutive title on the Roland Garros clay courts and move halfway to a Grand Slam blended in perfectly with the Floridian's last 12 months. "He played like a machine, hitting hard and everything in the court," said the seventh-seeded Korda after a disastrous Grand Slam championship debut. Since last year's triumph, Courier has reached the U.S. Open final, won the 1992 Australian Open and become the first top-ranked player in the world from the U.S. since John McEnroe in 1984.